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Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Finding Obituaries in Unexpected Places! #northcarolinapioneers

The Obituary is not always published in the State where the Deceased Resided!

From The Evening State Journal in Richmond, Virginia on January 5, 1871.

" Captain Samuel Holder Hikes. Yesterday Richmond paid civic honors worthy of the occasion to the remains of one who did more than this, for he lost his own life in a daring and devoted but vain effort to rescue a friend from death when every chance was against him. The story of Capt. Samuel Holder Hikes deserves to be written in letters of gold, and perpetuated in a monument of time-enduring brass. It is brief, but all tho move brilliant on that account. Young Ross was in the same apartment with him in the Spotswood. Captain Hikes did not awake till the smoke had almost filled and choked up the narrow passages and stairways of the hotel. Of course, his first thought was to save himself; and he had forced his way through the suffocating smoke, and reached (he open air of the street, and safety; when he suddenly bethought himself of his friend who was in the same room with him in a helpless condition. He endeavored to get assistance to go back for him, but failing, despite the entreaties of those outside, who felt it to be certain death, he rushed back into the burning building to save young Ross or die with him. The Rev. Mr. Edwards, in his oration over tho dead body of this brave young man at the church yesterday evening, truthfully aud eloquently said: He has woven the garlands of immortality around less heroic deeds than that performed by our brave and noble brother. The church on Broad street was crowded, while the streets without were filled with tho people, and the funeral procession was one of the largest and most imposing of the kind that we have witnessed in this city. It was composed in the main of his brothers of that noble order, the Knights of Pythias, in carrying out one of the cardinal principles of which worthy order, their heroic brother had fallen. The funeral cortege passed down Main street, to tho solemn music of the Death March, as the shades of the evening gathered over the cily, on its way to the depot; and the people were gathered on either side of the street, and attested their grief by their respectful silence am] the sorrow fulness of their demeanor. His remains were taken by the Danville cars to the little town of Milton, in Caswell county, North Carolina, where he first saw the light, and whose history he has so brilliantly illustrated by his death. There, in its simple cemetery, will he rest, and his people will be proud to know that there is at least one hero buried in their village churchyard". Caswell County NC Genealogy Resources